


carry on my wayward son

by thebrotherswholoved



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A Thing™ I Did, Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Angst, Azazel Didn’t Start The Fire, Curtain Fic, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Immolation, Kübler-Ross Based, M/M, Tumblr: thebrotherswholoved, Widowed, Wincest - Freeform, Winchester kids, bereaved, settling down, throughout the years, too soon?, tw: death, widower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebrotherswholoved/pseuds/thebrotherswholoved
Summary: “It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges. I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased than to live this way” (Steve Maraboli).





	carry on my wayward son

After years of hunting and saving people from things they know will never quit no matter how many hairs they pluck from their heads, Sam and Dean throw their guns into a box and throw it into the attic—where it’ll stay. They’ll forget how to turn off the safety, and that doesn’t just go for weapons; they want to make a life for themselves with the one thing they never had: safety. 

 

Young and in love, they live idyllic lives together for years to come. Sam finishes school and earns himself a degree in computer science; and, he somehow convinces Dean to give a bachelor’s degree a whack, which ends with him holding a certificate validating his degree in mechanical engineering. They even have children of their own: two daughters, Mariah Ellen and Eileen Joanna. Their starter suburban home is painted a soft grey that Sam chose (and made Dean paint), Dean makes smalltalk with the neighbors whenever he mows the lawn or chases a kid down the street on her tricycle, the boys swing the girls into their arms once a week to help them help wash Baby...they have everything they’ve ever wanted. 

 

Life is utterly perfect. Too perfect. On the second of November, 2025 the world they once knew goes up in flames. The embers burn bright and their daughters cough at the smoke and cry into their father’s ash-stained shirt. He’s crying too, his tears almost black from the smoke. When Sam receives the news he knew was coming, his cries become sobs into little Mariah’s sandy blonde hair. Of course, he asks the cause of the fire, the cause of his husband’s death; the bitter and wicked sense of relief he feels when he’s told it was a gas leak is almost too much. 

 

He and Dean had vowed to never tell the two innocent souls that now lay curled up together in his arms about hunting, their peculiar relationship, or what became of their family, but now Sam is able to scheme against himself instead of his girls. The man, though shedding murky tears that sting with every blow against his skin, makes a promise to himself that he’ll try his hardest to forget those haunting words he heard inside the house, words that made him shiver despite the blazing and blistering heat surrounding them…words that should never have been Dean’s last. 

 

“ _Baby_ , _take_ _the_ _kids_ _outside_ _as_ _fast as you can. Go, Sammy, now—I love you so damn much.”_

 

Instead of becoming his and Dean’s father, the one who beat and kicked and thrashed at the fabric of death until he found what had murdered his wife and died trying, Sam took his and Dean’s daughters in his arms and drove the impala to their forever-sanctuary in South Dakota. The girls are too young to understand why their Dada won’t be coming to Bobby’s as well or why they’ll never hear his goofy voice telling them bedtime stories. 

 

The girls’ grandfather takes them in without a second thought. He comforts his bereaved adoptive son for a few weeks before he’s able to face the reality of his loss and maybe, just maybe, begin to move on. Sam takes his daughters to a small town in Washington for a fresh start and has the most beautiful urn made for Dean’s ashes, one engraved with his name, date of birth, date of death, and one statement in the center of the plaque. “ _Neither_ _gone_ _nor_ _forgotten_ : _simply lost. Family don’t end in blood.”_

 

Over the years, he tries his best to answer every question their daughters stab into his heart: why’s Dada not here? _He's_ _gone_ _away to a very special_ _and_ _wonderful_ _place_. _He’s_ _probably_ _eating_ _pie_ _as_ _we_ _speak_.

 

Why’re you crying, Papa? _I_ _just_ _miss_ _your_ _Dad_ , _that’s_ _all_. _But_ _I_ _know_ _he’s_ _still_ _taking_ _care_ _of_ _us_.

 

Did he leave b'cause I put that fake roach under his pillow? _Absolutely_ _not_ , _he_ _loved_ _that_ _prank_. _In_ _fact_ , _he_ _loved it_ _so much that he_ _put_ a fake _snake_ _under_ _mine_.

 

What’s that fancy vase on the mantle? _That’s_ _what_ _Dada_ _gave us to remember him by. Isn’t it beautiful?_

 

And the one that always breaks his heart: did he not love us anymore? _He_ _loved— loves—us more than anything else in the world. No, we are his world. And we always will be._

 

With time, the pain of loss dulls into a bitter ache. The girls grow out of their training wheels, tricycles, muddy galoshes, and schoolyard crushes into little women Sam knows Dean would be so fucking proud of. Mariah graduates high school, attends Stanford university as a forensic science major, and gets a job as a private investigator two years before Eileen gets her teaching degree and works to teach hard-of-hearing and deaf children sign language. They have grown up thinking that their fathers met in college and that their ‘paternal’ grandfather died of a heart attack, and that’s okay—that’s what Dean always wanted: to protect his family. 

 

On an unusually bright mid-autumn morning, Mariah leaves her metropolitan flat and Eileen signs goodbye to her students for two days while they visit their father at his home nearby—like they do every year. Sam’s hair is greying a bit now but he embraces the years’ toll on him—the years his husband never got to live. Not a day goes by without brittle, fuzzy thoughts passing through the man’s head like vagrants, thoughts about how he’ll never get to make fun of his husband’s crows feet or hand him his reading glasses with a smug grin because his prescription from the optometrist is better than his. How he’ll never have to drag his drunk ass down off the stage at their daughters’ weddings before he embarrasses the hell out of them or apply for Medicare together. But, Sam’s not upset anymore; he knows that Dean would want him to live each day for him. 

 

The solemnity that used to accompany every second of November has passed over the years and now it’s just an excuse to get together and eat unhealthy shit—just how Dean would want it. Sam still puts an extra plate on the table every year and they just…remember him. Dean's presence lingers in the faces of his and Sam's not-so-little girls and in the way Sam's eyes light up at the mention of his husband. The man’s not ‘late’ like he’s dead but simply late to dinner and going to get hell for it when he at last arrives. 

 

This year, Sam pushes his hair back behind his ears as they sit around on the couches with some nearly-toxic IPAs in their hands and some old home videos that Dean obviously recorded (shaky angle) on the television before pulling two long and thin rectangular boxes from the end table drawer. He hands one to Eileen and the other to Mariah and watches with a nostalgic smile as they open the gifts that only took him twenty years to give them. 

 

He’s given both of his and Dean’s daughters a necklace with a small diamond pendant on each. On the silver-plated backs of the pendants, he asked the jeweller to engrave a message, something Dean told them. For Mariah, that phrase is “ _fight_ _like_ _you_ _mean_ _it_ ,”which Dean once yelled during one of her tournaments only to have every person in the gymnasium stare at him and the eight year old to reply, “Dad, this is a chess tournament!” For Eileen, he had engraved the words “ _I’m_ _glad_ _you_ _got_ _my_ _looks_ , _kiddo_ ,” which was said to her when she got a makeup kit from one of her friends and gave herself and her dad a makeover.

 

Mariah’s mascara is running by the time she’s finished reading the pendant for the sixth time and Eileen has her hand over her mouth to muffle her sobbing. Sam stands up and wraps his daughters in a tight embrace, rubbing their backs as they cry. Once consoled, they look their Papa in the eyes and Mariah is the first to speak.

 

“Where’s yours?” The twenty seven year old wipes her nose on her sleeve. She knows her sentimental father had to keep something to remember him by. 

 

Sam lifts his hand up to reveal his wedding band, which now has a stone embedded in the metal (which used to be a silver bullet), right where the word ‘ _Bitch_ ’ is engraved on the inside. “That Jerk is always gonna be stuck with me.”

 

After she’s finished chuckling, Eileen is the first to notice that the urn that had remained on the mantle for most of their lives, their protector, is no longer watching over them. The comfort in the room they always feel whenever the vase is near, however, lingers still. “Where’d you do it?” 

 

“Over that little lake where we used to take you fishing. He proposed there…it seemed appropriate,” the man laughs with a slight crack in his voice. “There’s a charm hanging on the impala’s rear view mirror, too. Couldn’t resist.” 

 

Now that the girls have their father with them always, their lives seem to bloom and blossom even more than before. Mariah finds love in the most obscure place (the quarterly meeting, of course) and feels her Dad’s presence engulf her on her wedding day like a sweet, warm embrace in the summer sun while her Papa walks her down the aisle. Eileen stops working as a teacher and goes back to school to get a degree in psychology, only to get a tingling feeling in the tips of her fingers when she receives her certificate that's identical to how she felt at her first father-daughter dance, her Dad lifting her to stand on his shoes as they moved about with no rhythm whatsoever. The sisters grow up but not apart, and Sam is there to guide them all through it like he did when he taught them to ride a bike or drive a car. 

 

The years continue to slip between his fingers and the daydreams of what could’ve been begin to fade into memories of what was and is. Sam purchases the little house on the lake where he scattered his husband’s ashes and FaceTimes his daughters nearly every night before he goes to sleep on his side of the bed, even though the other side is empty. Dean’s voice still speaks to him in his dreams but it’s getting harder to hear with each month’s page being torn from the calendar. Every evening he sits on the dock with his husband’s favorite throw blanket draped around his shoulders and talk to him like he’s sitting there beside him; he tells the almost-living body of water about his day, how terrible the last chapter of the book he’s reading was, that Eileen has begun the process of adopting a child, how Mariah won’t stop complaining about her boss, and even the trivial things like how his morning coffee needed one more packet of sugar than usual in order to be tolerable. 

 

More years pass and just as every story has a beginning, Sam begins to see the end of his own journey approaching. One day, he stirs from sleep and he just knows that it’ll be his last time waking up; but, the security of death has become a comfort to him. He laminates his will (because he’s Sam fucking Winchester) as he drinks his orange juice and looks at old photographs of their wedding, the births of their daughters, baby pictures, and candids while Dean’s favorite comedian drawls on in the background. When the sun begins to set, he writes four letters with nostalgia bleeding onto the paper from his pen: one for Eileen, one for Mariah, one for Drew (Mariah’s husband), and one for Josiah (Eileen’s adoptive son). Sam places those beside his will and FaceTimes his girls and their families for a half hour longer than usual, asking each of them to come up to his home tomorrow to help him "move some furniture." They get suspicious when he begins crying at their usual ‘I love you’s and catch on to what’s happening but don’t tell him, knowing full well that their father despises goodbyes. He cleans his little house one final time before climbing into bed and wrapping his age-touched body with that hideous blanket Dean always loved, a content smile on his face. He’s ready for whatever comes next, no matter what that may be.

 

The grey-haired man’s eyes flutter shut and his heart ceases to beat at around one in the morning. 

 

When he opens his eyes for the next time, he’s outside his and Dean’s first house—the one with they grey paint—and has to blink away his surprise when he realises that there’s no ashes coating the sides. His wedding ring has no diamond and his face no wrinkles, and he’s just about to inspect his hair when he sees someone walking out onto the porch, barefooted and bright eyed. Sam’s smile widens tenfold and he throws himself into his husband’s waiting arms, melting at the strong embrace he’s missed for over too fucking long and the scent of the cologne Dean knows is his favorite. The green in his eyes has never seemed so vibrant when he takes Sam’s hand in his and kisses him for the first time in decades, decades. 

 

When they part, he cups his woundless hands upon Sam’s hips and gives him a loving smile. “I’m so glad you’re finally here.” 

 

“Well,” Sam blinks away some tears—happy tears, “I figured I’d take my sweet time, just to annoy you.” 

 

God, the laugh Dean lets out at those words is music to his husband’s ears and he never, ever wants to lose that sound again. He dons a fond gaze and squeezes Sam’s hand with all the love in the word lingering in the space between them. “I am so fucking proud of you, Sammy. Thanks for not givin’ up.”

 

“As if I ever would,” the brunet pecks the tip of his nose. “Us Winchesters don’t quit. And I always knew that when I come home to you someday, I should come home the right way.” 

 

“You did,” Dean nods with an open-mouthed smile before repeating the last words he ever said to his husband—‘on earth as it is in heaven,’ right? 

 

“I love you so damn much.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know why I wrote this but I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
